


Last Flight

by lauraschiller



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Lost Stars - Claudia Gray
Genre: Battle of Exegol, F/M, Look Through My Eyes, Married Couple, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Redemption, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26903485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauraschiller/pseuds/lauraschiller
Summary: Ciena, Thane and Nash have unfinished business, and where better to finish it than in the skies above Exegol? This story has been cross-posted to FF.net.
Relationships: Ciena Ree & Nash Windrider, Thane Kyrell & Nash Windrider, Thane Kyrell/Ciena Ree
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Last Flight

It had taken a long time for Thane and Ciena to respond to General Organa’s distress call. Their home planet Jelucan was a long way from Crait, and their small two-seater vessel, the Muunyak, was as old and battle-scarred as they were. It took considerable repairs before it would even start.  
At first, Thane had argued against answering the call (“Didn’t we give enough in the last war? You almost died, for the Force’s sake, and besides, we’re needed here!”), but his wife, immovable as their native mountains, had won out.  
“I was a cog in that machine once,” she’d said, dark eyes haunted as she stared up into the cloudy gray sky, still polluted from the Empire’s strip-mining thirty years ago. “It killed my mother, broke my father’s heart and almost took you from me forever. My honor demands that I do everything in my power to fight back this time. But you … ” She cupped her husband’s cheek and looked up at him pleadingly. “You don’t have to come with me. The First Order may not be here yet, but some of us will need to defend this place if they ever show up.”  
Standing in the hangar bay that belonged to the old Kyrell estate (which Thane had inherited as the last surviving family member and now took ironic pride in turning into a school for the valley children), one pale and lanky, the other dark and small, both dressed in their shabby flight suits, they could almost have been the same children who used to sneak in here for secret flying practice fifty years ago. But the gray in Ciena’s black curls, Thane’s receded hairline, and a lifetime’s worth of memories told them otherwise.  
“Nah.” Thane put on his best daredevil smile. “You’ve rubbed off on me too much, valley girl. I’ve got a sense of honor too. If this is our last flight, you’re not going anywhere without your co-pilot.”  
“I shouldn’t be glad about that,” said Ciena, smiling sadly. “But I am.”  
“Mumma? Pappa? We can stay,” a strong young voice said from behind them. “We’ll look after things here until you come back.”  
Their eldest daughter Verine stepped into the hangar with her head held high, followed by her sister Jude and her brother Yendor. They were between 25 and 18 years old, but still looked like children to Thane’s eyes. For a moment he was terrified at the idea of leaving them alone … until he saw the looks on their faces. Jude’s eyes were red with crying, Yendor scowled, and Verine wore the same stone-faced expression Ciena used to wear to hide impending panic, but all three of them were determined to be brave. They had their father’s fire and their mother’s steel, and they were the same age their parents had been during the first war.   
They’d be okay. They had to be.  
Thane turned to Ciena and held out his hand to play their old game for the pilot’s seat. “Lizard-toad-snake?”  
Thane won. (He suspected that she let him.)  
They piled into one long, messy group hug with all three of their children before boarding the ship.

/

The air above Exegol was so thick with every variety of spaceship, from X-wings that could only seat one person to Final Order Star Destroyers the size of entire cities, that there was barely a way to maneuver, let alone aim. Explosions streaked across the sky like fiery rain, each one signifying uncountable deaths; it was a massacre that would go down in history. And in all the chaos, except for the distinctive Star Destroyers, it was easy to lose track of which ship was which …  
… unless one of them opened a comm channel and hailed you directly.  
“This is Captain Nash Windrider of the Star Destroyer Desolation. Resistance vessel, respond.”  
Nash sounded like a ghost of his former self. The warm, musical voice they remembered had become harsh and grating, as if he spent too much time drinking, smoking, or shouting at subordinates. He affected an upper-class Coruscanti accent, like so many First Order officers who seemed to think it sounded impressive. One would never have guessed that he was a weaver’s son from Alderaan.  
Thane and Ciena, sitting side by side in the cockpit of the Muunyak, caught each other’s eyes with a shared look of dismay. Could they really fight an old friend, who had been Thane’s roommate and like a brother to him, who had held Ciena together when she was separated from Thane? Even if he had become a fanatic? Even if killing him was the only alternative to letting him kill them?  
“I know it’s you, Thane Kyrell, you treacherous coward,” the transmission continued, crackling with contempt. “Now are you going to run away again, or are we finally going to finish what we started?”  
Thane hit the responding sequence. “How the kriff did you know it was me?”  
“I recognized your flight pattern,” said Nash. “I’ve been studying all the battle records from the old war I could get my hands on. I wanted to make sure you see me coming, which is more respect than you ever showed me!”  
While he spoke, as if to prove him right, a massive wedge-shaped Star Destroyer that had to be the Desolation bore down on their Muunyak like an enormous sea monster. Thane steered their little ship abruptly downward, into one of the long, steep gorges on the surface of Exegol that looked like depleted mines. He didn’t care what Nash had said about running away; his first duty was still to keep himself and Ciena alive as long as possible.  
They zipped through easily, turning sideways and even upside down as they had always done in the mountains back home, but the Desolation barely managed to follow them. Its sides scraped against the walls of the canyon, dislodging rocks. No other ships seemed to be following them, though, whether friend or foe. Nash clearly wanted to keep his revenge for himself.  
While Thane navigated the canyon, Ciena reached for the comm panel. She knew it was a desperately long shot, but she would never forgive herself if she didn’t try.   
“Wait, please – Nash, I’m here too!”  
“Ciena?”  
Suddenly the harsh voice crackling through the speakers was very small. He almost sounded like the boy she remembered, the one who had been heartbroken after the destruction of Alderaan, the one who had reproached himself for his tactlessness in falling in love with her and assured her he would always be her friend.  
“I thought you were dead … ”  
“I’m so sorry.”   
“I mourned for you!” Raw pain turned Nash’s familiar voice back into a snarl. “I recommended you for a medal, and all this time you were - ”  
“Nash, please!” She could feel tears running down her own face, distorting her voice, not unlike his. Thane spared a glance away from the controls to convey wordless understanding; they both knew exactly how Nash must be feeling right now. Betrayal stung, no matter which side you were on. It wasn’t rational – he had to know that there was no way she could have contacted him, after the way he and the last Imperials had gone so thoroughly off the grid – but then, emotions never were.  
Ciena wished the Muunyak had holoemitters. She had no idea what he even looked like now. If they could see each other face to face, would he understand how sorry she really was? Or would thirty years of hatred leave him blind as well as deaf?  
“I’m sorry I failed you,” Ciena went on, holding tightly to her headset as Thane executed several dangerous turns. If she didn’t say this now, she might never get the chance. “Surveillance or no, I should never have left you alone that day. When you cut your hair … ”  
She was afraid to speak the name of Alderaan out loud. When Thane had done that during their last battle, Nash had responded with a barrage of weapons fire. She still didn’t understand what twisted paths his reasoning could have taken, that watching the Empire destroy his home would turn him into its most devoted follower, but she blamed herself. At the time it had seemed impossible to have an honest conversation without being spied on by their superiors. But if they had, would Nash still be the man he was today?   
In hindsight, the loss of his Alderaanian braid had been a warning. He had cut off more than his hair that day, and it had never grown back.  
“We should’ve been there,” Thane added, knowing what day she meant. “Messaged you. Sat you down with a bottle of Corellian ale. Anything.”  
They waited for a response, whether with words or weapons.  
Nothing.

/

Nash was on the bridge of his very own Star Destroyer, in the captain’s chair, behind a force field that kept all his communications private, surrounded by subordinates who would never dare to question him, no matter how bizarre his orders might seem (like chasing one tiny Resistance ship into the gorges when there were so many easier targets available).  
Yet he had never felt so small.  
Avenging Ciena’s death had been his reason for living. Throughout all these years of hiding from the Republic, fighting for survival on the fringes of the galaxy, scrounging for resources and “recruiting” soldiers for the First Order with methods that didn’t bear thinking about, his memories of her – her strength that kept her going after Thane’s disappearance, her kindness to Nash even if she didn’t return his feelings, her courage as she gave her life for her crew – had been all that kept him going. Every time he followed an order that made him feel sick inside, every time he gave the Empire another piece of his soul, he had told himself it was worth it, if it would only help to bring the Republic down.   
It was the Republic, in the form of Thane Kyrell, that had betrayed and ultimately killed Ciena. It was also the Republic, in the form of Leia Organa, that had provoked the Empire into destroying Alderaan.   
The Republic was to blame. He had told himself this over and over again, until he began to believe it. Because if it wasn’t the Republic, then it must have been the Empire – the same Empire Nash had saluted as his homeworld burned to nothingness.  
His parents’ shop that always smelled like wool and dyes and good home cooking. The waterfall he had wanted to show Thane someday when their tour of duty was over. The bedroom he’d kept forgetting to clean, before the Academy had drilled neatness into him, back when all he had to worry about was his mother’s sigh as she shook out his crumpled sheets. His father’s hands, steady and delicate, teaching him to braid his hair in the same ancient pattern that decorated the tapestries on the walls. The rhythmic sound of the loom.  
Gone in an instant.  
If it wasn’t the Republic’s fault, Nash had thought that day, then it was the Empire’s. And if it was the Empire’s fault, then he, an officer in the Imperial Fleet, might as well have killed his family with his own hands.  
Hate had kept him alive and functioning all this time. How could he survive without it?  
Alderaan was still gone, but Ciena was alive … as Thane’s co-pilot and a soldier in the Rebel Alliance.  
Learning that Thane had faked his death and joined the Rebels all those years ago had made Nash furious, but this was different. It was one thing for Thane to abandon Ciena, quite another for him to save her life. Someone must have gotten her out of her wrecked ship on Jakku in time, and who else would it be but Thane?   
She was alive, and she was still the same Ciena Ree he had loved. Even a few words were enough to tell him that. Her voice was deeper, more mature, but as strong and clear as ever, and (I’m sorry I failed you) she was still honorable to a fault.   
Nash had been wrong about so much. What else was he wrong about? His entire worldview had been built on an unsteady foundation, and now it was crumbling to pieces before his eyes.  
It was only several decades of iron-clad military discipline that prevented him from falling apart on the bridge. Instead, he rose from his chair, cut the comm channel to Thane and Ciena’s ship, walked over to his tactical officer’s chair, and waved the young man aside with a flick of his fingers. The lieutenant scrambled to obey.  
Nash took his seat, prayed to his ancestors for the first time in thirty years, and opened fire.

/

Thane swore and threw the Muunyak into a barrel roll to dodge the onslaught. The old tin can rattled and creaked, and a beeping alarm indicated that at least one of the energy beams had damaged their shields.  
“He’s trying to kill us!” Thane exclaimed.  
That had been Ciena’s first thought too, but as a former captain of a Star Destroyer herself, she knew better. The Desolation had even more firepower than the old Imperial ships used to have; it could have crushed the Muunyak like a beetle by now if Nash chose. The very fact that they were still alive meant that he didn’t want them dead. So what was he doing?  
Toying with them? No. Nash had always been too straightforward a person to do that. That had been one of many things Ciena had liked about him as a friend. There was only one other answer.  
“He’s trying to be killed,” she said.  
Horror and guilt rose within her as she thought of the Desolation’s crew. The First Order stole children and brainwashed them into Stormtroopers. How many of them would die along with their captain if the ship were destroyed? This was the same scenario she had tried to avoid at the Battle of Jakku.   
If she and Thane gave up without trying, though, how many of their own pitifully small Resistance fleet would the Desolation kill? And if they tried to run, there was nowhere to go except up into the sky, where they would be desperately outnumbered by the entire Final Order.  
This was the cost of war, and it was time to pay it.  
“But how - ?” she began to ask.  
At that moment, another abrupt maneuver brought them underneath the Desolation. Through the viewscreen, they could see the Death Star cannon on its underbelly, like a red mouth prepared to devour them.  
Take out the cannons, had been their last order from Generals Finn and Dameron at the beginning of the battle. Every one destroyed is a world saved. Death Star tech was extremely volatile, even in miniature form like this. An explosion inside one of those cannons might well destroy the entire ship.  
“In there,” said Thane grimly. “It’s the only way.”  
That would be a suicide run and they both knew it. It was her turn to want to protest, but he looked as determined as she had ever seen him. She didn’t want either of them to die, but if they had to, what better way than this?  
There was no time for kisses or goodbyes, it all happened too fast, but they didn’t need them. There was nothing left to tell each other that they didn’t already know. Using one hand each to steer, they clasped hands across the space between their seats.  
Look through my eyes, Wynnet, was Ciena’s last thought as they flew into the mouth of the cannon.   
I’ll see you soon.


End file.
